Kruse's Keys: Read "The High Mountains of Portugal" to Learn About Loss and a Path Home

First, hat tip to my mother in law for passing along this terrific read to me over the holidays...I tore through it in a matter of days!

Man Booker prize winning author Yann Martel has crafted a trio of related novellas that lay bare the trauma (sometimes literally) of loss and its psychic weight that can echo across generations like a deep curse. In “High Mountains” we join the journey of three characters: a bereaved widower on a mission to find a lost african crucifix; a grieving, delusional pathologist obsessed with Agatha Christie; and an aging widower/politician who buys a chimpanzee and retreats with the animal to his family’s ancestral village. It’s in this village--in the high (non) mountains of Portugal that all three stories intersect.

Martel has created a world and tale that falls into the realm of magic realism--if you’ve read or seen his other story, “The Life of Pi”, you will have a good idea of what to expect. My jaw definitely dropped numerous times at the action that unfolded but the author tells the story with such skill that the ridiculousness of the situation only draws you in further.

See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Key Quotes:

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object (12).

And now, how do I dare love anything? (202)

We loved our son like the sea loves and island, always surrounding him with our arms, always touching him and crashing upon his shore with our care and concern (200).

Grief is a disease (201).